The Rival

aka: Rival

Edit Locked

"How very fitting that Yugi is competing in the first duel of my tournament. It's only a matter of time before he and I face off against each other again. After all, he's my arch rival. The Sherlock Holmes to my Moriarty. The Kaneda to my Tetsuo. The Speed Racer to my Racer X. I could go on, but I won't."

Example subpages

Cereal mascots Count Chocula and Frankenberry have always been rivals. Depending on the Writer, their rivalry has ranged from friendly to ugly. (Both often consider Boo Berry a rival too, but he's only interested in promoting his cereal.)

Fan Works

Advice and Trust: Since they met Asuka always regarded Shinji as her rival, a challenge to beat, the one could best her. After getting together their rivalry becomes more friendly but she still encourages him to push himself so that she keeps feeling challenged and driven to improve her piloting and fighting skills.

Later Mari becomes Asuka's rival. Word of God states that Asuka needs a rival because she is fiercely competitive.

HERZ: During the Angel War Asuka regarded Shinji like hers. She really wanted to beat him. In this story she thinks of Kurumi like a rival: she was a pretty woman who was after her husband, had deflowered him and whom Shinji owed his life. Asuka felt threatened by her, but Kurumi was a challenge and she did not run from challenges.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: Asuka felt that Shinji was her rival. She's pretty bitter because she worked hard and getting beaten and mind-raped was everything what she got, whereas Shinji –as far as she knew- was picked from the streets and surpassed her without even trying it.

In Once More with Feeling Asuka regards Shinji as her rival because he's the higher synch rate and has performed brilliantly in all of his engagements with the enemy.

In Jurassic World, Vic Hoskins is this to Owen Grady, at least in his own mind. As the raptors' primary caretaker and imprinted alpha, Owen is the only person they won't kill on sight and has a great deal of say in what happens to them. He also respects that they're animals and have feelings, personalities, and control over their own actions. Hoskins, on the other hand, desperately wants to use the raptors as weapons of war and sees Owen as nothing more than an irritatingly soft-hearted obstacle that's keeping him from making this dream a reality.

In Space Marine Battles novels Fall of Damnos and Veil of Darkness, Captains Sicarius and Agemann are described as such. Both are renowed and accomplished captains and equal candidates for the next Chapter Master, but their understanding of the Big Book of War differ greatly (for Sicarius, it's tips and guidelines, but for Agemann, it's the Bible).

Demandred has essentially the same motivation, but much, much stronger- he was born (birth name Barid Bel Medar) one day after Lews Therin Telamon (aforementioned prior incarnation) and his life followed that pattern from there on, with him being second to Lews Therin in almost every way, including skill with magic, political success, good looks, and even height. They even both courted the same woman, but she preferred Lews Therin. Then the War of Power broke out, and Barid Bel found out he was better than Lews Therin at one thing- war. Unfortunately, the powers that be made Lews Therin their top general anyway, and that final straw snapped Barid Bel's mind completely so that he became obsessessed with killing Lews Therin and joined the Shadow to better accomplish it, changing his name to Demandred in the process and quickly becoming its most feared general note Though the joke was on him still; the Dark One already had a Dragon, so Demandred was still stuck playing second fiddle, this time to Ishamael. In the last book of the series, Rand (who now has memories of his life as Lews Therin back) reflects on how he encouraged this rivalry and expresses regret that he drove Demandred to madness and evil when he could have been one of the greatest heroes of the age- had he not been born at the same time as Lews Therin.

Draco Malfoy is this to Harry, going out of his way to antagonize him at least once per book (excluding the last one).

Gabriel Lightwood presumably to Will Herondale in The Infernal Devices. They gradually learn to respect each other in The Clockwork Princess. Will doesn't have much of a choice, his younger sister ends up marrying Gabriel.

Manhwa

Tower of God - Novick sees himself as a rival of Koon's half-brother Ran, who in turn sees him as nuisance.

Clay and Candide in Safe Havens are competitive with each other since right before birth-in fact, who could be born first was their first competition. (Candide claims victory, Clay maintains she only won cause she was four inches shorter than him.)

Pinball

In Full Throttle, the player's rival is the reigning World Champion, Francisco "The Scorpion" Valentino.

Professional Wrestling

During the territorial era of USA pro wrestling, it was very common for a promoter to invite two long time enemies in another territory to act as a tag team in his own. While less common in later years, the practice never quite went away, WCW openly admitting that Air Paris and Air Styles were fierce adversaries before it put them together. Not only will the two know each other well, and thus have one step to cohesiveness down already, but it makes your territory seem really important when two enemies put aside their differences to find success in it. The partners tend to go right back to feuding upon return to their original area too (such as the Style and Paris in NWA Wildside).

This was not exclusive to the USA either. While Los Hermanos Shadow (Black Shadow and Blue Demon) were most famous for feuding with El Santo, they eventually performed heel face turns and teamed up with him, Black Shadow actually being on his team during the debut of Santo's other famed arch enemies, Los Misioneros de la Muerte.

Sinn Bodhi stated that he considered Techno Destructo to be his Arch-Enemy when asked to team with him in Vendetta Pro Wrestling, but agreed to do it anyway. This was just one example in a series that was openly acknowledged. Despite it's name, Vendetta Pro commonly turns long time enemies into tag teams.

Team Hell No. The only reason Daniel Bryan and Kane even ended up as a tag team is because their mutual former love interest, then-General Manager of RAW AJ Lee, decided to send them to anger management together in spite of the fact they had been feuding for the last couple of months. It eventually culminated in them winning the tag team titles, and using their matches to one-up each other whenever given the chance.

Radio

A light-hearted comedy example can be found in the long-running "feud" between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen. The two would frequently appear on each others shows to harass one another and trade barbs, leading to a Crowning Moment of Funny when Jack Benny, who had taken an assumed name to appear on Allen's new game show, finds out his "big prize" is to have his pants pressed — right then and there.

Jack Benny: You haven't seen the end of me, Allen! Fred Allen: It won't be long now!

A little history to how it came about — in 1936, Allen had a child prodigy violinist on his program. Knowing that part of Benny's schtick was playing the violin "horribly", he made some good-natured ribs about Benny's playing. Benny and his writers decided to take up the gauntlet, and the two carried on the "feud" for the next few weeks, having a ball trading barbs back and forth, finally culminating with the two squaring off on the same stage. When they found that the public loved it and may even have thought that this was a real celebrity catfight going on live every week rather than an Overly Long Gag, they decided to make it a continuous part of both the characters. The "feud" didn't end until Allen's sudden death in 1954, after which Benny gave a very heartfelt eulogy for his friend.

In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, we have Miles Edgeworth, who was a childhood friend of Phoenix, but is now his rival. He eventually becomes Phoenix's friend again — while remaining his rival in court. Phoenix himself says that one of his primary motivations for becoming a lawyer was so he could face Edgeworth in court.

Franziska von Karma steps up to the bench for the second game. She violently wants to defeat Phoenix because she wants to succeed where Edgeworth failed.

She also shares this position with Shi-Long Lang in Ace Attorney Investigations, specifically in the flashback case four, where she's a thirteen-year-old obsessed with beating Edgeworth in everything. Edgeworth mostly ignores it.

And for the third game we have Godot who really hates Phoenix's guts and won't explain why. He blames Phoenix for Mia's death.

In Apollo Justice we have Klavier Gavin, the brother of Apollo's former mentor. He is way more helpful than the other rivals though.

Yanagi and Hiroki have this relationship in Canvas 2 after reconciling.

Battler has two through the course of Umineko: When They Cry. On the first four arcs his rival is most likely Beatrice; while Battler tries to prove that all the murders happened by human methods, Beatrice opposes him stating that all were made with Magic, and they fight for a last time at the Hidden Tea Party of the fourth episode, with Battler victorious over a resigning Beatrice who already got tired of the game. On the Chiru arcs his rival turns out to be Furudo Erika, a piece placed by Bernkastel to serve as the detective, effectively hijacking Battler's role. Both clash numerous times and their conflict finally ends in the famous chained closed room deathmatch.

Bun-Bun also has a Rival in the form of Santa Claus, who tries to kill him each Christmas. An odd version of the trope, since Bun-Bun is a sociopath, and Santa is generally portrayed as a decent (if slightly obsessed) guy just trying to see that justice is done.

Lance has a rival in Gold Coin Comics named Blake, who has traits from Seifer in FFVIII.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy